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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Overflow crowd in the lobbyPhoto by Vicki Westberg

By Diane Hettrick

In a grueling six hour council meeting, the Shoreline City Council slogged through the proposed amendments to the 185th Street subarea zoning map, and finished. Then, at midnight, they tackled the development regulations.

The meeting began with public comment. 32 people spoke to the council. The original one hour comment time was extended to include everyone who wanted to speak, and was extended to an hour and a half. I believe that one of the speakers was in favor of rezoning for high density, but the rest were against the council's rezone. There were new faces among the speakers, people who had just discovered their homes were in the rezone.

Photo by Vicki Westberg

The council chambers were full, with people standing along the back wall. Seats were set up in the lobby outside the chambers for the overflow crowd.

The zoning map the Council started with was the one presented by the Planning Commission. The Phase One area was surrounded by small areas proposed for amendments, designated A - W, with an A1 and A2 as well. The councilmembers had trouble keeping the proposals straight and spent a lot of time talking about process.

Without animosity, most of the amendments passed on a 4-3 vote with Hall, McGlashan, Winstead, and McConnell in the majority, and Roberts, Eggen, and Salomon in the minority. McConnell was sometimes the swing vote.

32 people spoke during public commentPhoto by Vicki Westberg

In general, the council appeared to have softened their position on a large rezone, but still approved a map that was far larger than the one originally presented to the public at the very beginning of the process. The original rezone was a corridor down 185th that went about three lots deep on each side and created no controversy.

This one goes from Aurora to 10th on 185th, doglegs south and joins with the North City business district. It goes as far north as 189th or 190th and I'm still trying to figure out why they included Shoreline Park in the high rise rezone. The area south of 185th was reduced, but still includes a large portion of Meridian Park neighborhood.

The city staff will be redrawing the map to include all the changes. We will publish it when it is done and try to figure out what the fall out will be for people who want to continue living in the area.

5
comments:

This was a preliminary set of votes. The Council isn't set to make a final decision until March 16th. Even that date isn't sacred; the Council was originally scheduled to make a final decision last Monday, and put it off for three weeks.

There is still time to tell the City Council that they have it wrong, and need some major fixing.

Good article! Hopefully, someone will volunteer to write a "guest opinion" with their analysis of the various proposals for 185th. Later, the same for 145th, where we know that traffic will continue to be a mess due to not having enough years - or enough money - to fix that street, something that should have been thought of long ago, when there still was time to get a plan in motion. Now, we're down to 8 years and counting. As a frame of reference, Aurora's 3 miles is going on 20 years, while 145th is about 5 miles from Greenwood to Lake City Way and has multiple owners.